Question: I do not mean for this to sound like bragging, but I think I am doing most things right financially. I am debt free other than my house. I have a 529 plan for my son’s college education, a 401K plan for my retirement and a health savings account. I even shop for all my insurance online to get the lowest price possible. Hopefully, I am on schedule to retire by age 65. What else should I be doing?

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With Thanksgiving over and Christmas right around the corner, most people tend to start looking at their waist lines. The New Year’s resolutions begin to surface. The first is to start eating healthier. The second is to lose the extra weight accumulated during the holiday period. However, eating healthy and buying groceries in a specialty section such as vegetarian foods can become too expensive. Prevention featured an article in which one Canadian village of residents reported eating healthy as expensive, for example the purchase of a head of cabbage is $28 and $65 for a pound of chicken.

We hear about a lot of things we can do to improve our health and how we can have a longer life here on Earth.

For example, we’re told to avoid sugary snacks, exercise more, lose weight, control stress and keep our blood pressure down. For a lot of us this will involve making changes to our normal daily routines. But how many of the following things are you already doing to have a longer, healthier life?

• Having a hobby
• Going on a vacation
• Sleeping in on Saturdays
• Connecting with other people
• Flossing your teeth
• Daily prayer

It’s a shame that the “most wonderful time of the year” can sometimes bring out the worst in people.

The unrealistic expectations of trying to create the perfect Christmas can often turn the best of us into instant Grinches, lashing out at anyone in sight for no good reason at all. And worst of all, that stress doesn’t fix anything or create perfection or peace, it only takes away from the real message and meaning of the holiday season.

Domestic violence does not only affect those who are being abused. Each day their friends, family and co-workers find themselves having to bite their tongues as they see obvious signs of abuse. These people are known by domestic abuse advocates as secondary victims, those who have to spend each day knowing that their loved ones are suffering.

Domestic Abuse Resistance Team advocate Debra Faircloth said for those of us living in Louisiana, it is a statistical impossibility that we don’t know at least one person who is being abused.

This month is Domestic Violence Awareness month and a candlelight vigil to honor the lives of those lost to domestic violence will begin at 6 p.m. tonight in the Ruston Civic Center. We’ve all heard quite a bit about how to recognize the signs of abuse, but I realized I didn’t know what to do with that information.